Friday, June 4, 2010

Funerals and prayers for nine activists, who died in Israel’s Gaza flotilla raid, were held in Istanbul on Thursday.

Tens of thousands attended the funeral of the nine Turkish nationals, including one teen of dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship. The coffins were draped in Turkish and Palestinian flags. There was widespread anger from those attending. Released activists arrived to their home countries yesterday and today.

The Turkish President Abdullah Gül said that Turkey would act calmly and said;

The youngest of the nine activists killed, a 19-year-old high school student Furkan Dogan, was shot in the head and chest. He was born in Troy New York, but moved to Turkey when he was two. He will be buried in his family’s hometown of Kayseri in central Turkey on Friday. A United States State Department spokesman said it would probe the death of the Turkish-American killed, but said the FBI were not involved “at this point.”

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that soldiers were acting in self-defence. He said the activists were not peace activists but “violent supporters of terrorism”. Israel has stated that of the 7 soldiers wounded during the assault, 2 were shot with weapons wrestled from Israeli forces. But Swedish activist Mattias Gardell scoffed at such statements, replying, “the Israelis started shooting first. We had no weapons, the Israelis had weapons”.

Abdullah Gül said Israel committed “one of the biggest mistakes ever in its history,” and the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an called Israel’s actions “a historic mistake.” The leader of the Islamic charity IHH spoke to the crowd, saying, “The whole world supports us. We will shake the foundations of Zionism”.

The activists had attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The Irish ship MV Rachel Corrie arriving some time this weekend, will be the next ship to challenge the blockade.

Monday, January 7, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the use of lethal injection as a method for the imposition of the death penalty in the United States. Two men, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., who were convicted of murder in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and sentenced to death, sued the state in 2004 arguing that the use of lethal injection as a method of imposition of capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Thirty-seven states and the Federal Government have capital punishment for some crimes, all except Nebraska (which uses electrocution) use lethal injection. The process uses three chemicals in a “cocktail”, which, by the procedures that are used to apply them to the condemned, (three injections given consecutively) allegedly “create a significant and unnecessary risk of inflicting severe pain that could be prevented by the adoption of reasonable safeguards”, their lawyers said in court papers. “Kentucky seeks to execute in a relatively humane manner and has worked hard to adopt such a procedure,” Kentucky Attorney General Gregory Stumbo has said. The state has also argued in its brief against supporting the plaintiffs’ appeal that it will lead to “an endless road of litigation. … Condemned inmates will never run out of ideas for changes to the procedures, drugs or equipment used during lethal injection.”

Baze was scheduled to be executed on January 8 after Governor of Kentucky Ernie Fletcher signed his death warrant, but the Kentucky Supreme Court suspended his execution on September 12, 2007, arguing it needed more time to examine arguments he had made in a separate appeal. He was convicted of killing Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe in 1992 while the lawmen were trying to serve him with arrest warrants. Bowling was convicted of killing Edward and Tina Earley in Louisville in 1990.

According to the article on lethal injection in Wikipedia, the three chemicals used are Sodium thiopental to render the offender unconscious; Pancuronium/Tubocurarine: to stop all muscle movement except the heart, causing muscle paralysis, collapse of the diaphragm, and would eventually cause death by asphyxiation; and Potassium chloride to stop the heart. The chemicals apparently cannot be combined together as they could precipitate into a solid and be ineffective. It is argued that thiopental is a very short-term anesthetic and may wear off during the procedure, causing anesthesia awareness and excruciating pain from the effects of the other drugs.

In oral hearings today, the justices seemed skeptical that the chemical concoction causes extreme pain or that a better method was available. A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs argued that if insufficient anesthetic is given, when the inmate is given the paralyzing drug, they will experience agonizing pain, but be unable to react, and that it is even illegal in Kentucky to euthanize animals in this fashion. Some of the justices have considered sending the case back for further hearings to determine if a single barbiturate would be superior to the current method.

While the Supreme Court has examined the application of the death penalty many times over the past 40 years, this is the first time the court has reviewed the issue of the method of execution in 100 years, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. A ruling is not expected until June. There are about 3,000 people on death row in the United States, and about 60 are executed each year. Since the case was accepted by the Supreme Court, all executions in the United States have been temporarily suspended pending the decision.

The case name is Baze v. Rees.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The United States Senate has approved a hard-fought measure to overhaul the health care system. The vote will be followed by the difficult process of reconciling the Senate-passed bill with one approved by the House of Representatives, in order to get a final measure to President Barack Obama.

“The yeas are 60, the nays are 39. H.R. 3590 as amended, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is passed,” Vice President Joe Biden announced. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky did not show up for the vote leading to the 39 nays. Mike Reynard, a spokesman for Bunning, said in an e-mail that “The senator had family commitments.”

The vice president presided over the Senate at the time of the vote in his role as President of the United States Senate.

As expected, Republicans voted against the bill while all Democrats and two Independents, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voted for it.

At an estimated $87 billion, the measure would expand health insurance coverage to about 30 million more Americans currently without it, and create new private insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, to expand choice.

And, like the slightly more expensive measure passed by the House of Representatives, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, it would end a practice by private insurance companies of denying coverage to individuals with existing health problems.

Both the Senate and House measures would require nearly all Americans to purchase some form of insurance, while lower-income Americans would receive help from federal government subsidies.

In remarks before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, said opponents had done everything they could to prevent the vote from taking place.

Speaking to reporters, Reid and others hailed the vote as a victory and a major step toward providing millions more Americans with access to health care. “This is a victory because we have affirmed that the ability to live a healthy life in our great country is a right and not merely a privilege for the select few,” Reid said.

Reid and others including Robert Byrd, the 92-year-old Democrat from West Virginia, paid tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy, who died this past August after spending decades of his career in the Senate pursuing health care reform.

When casting his vote Byrd said, “Mr. President, this is for my friend Ted Kennedy. Aye.”

Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Senator Kennedy, watched the proceedings from the Senate visitor’s gallery, as did Representative John Dingell, Democrat from Michigan, who has been a long time advocate of health care reform and who sponsored and introduced the House version of the health care reform bill.

In the final hours of debate on the Senate bill, Republicans asserted it would be ineffective and add sharply to the U.S. budget deficit.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican from Alabama said of the bill, “This legislation may have a great vision, it may have a great idea about trying to make the system work better. But it does not. These are huge costs [and] it’s not financially sound.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to defeat the bill when the Senate reconvenes in January saying, “This fight is not over. This fight is long from over. My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law.”

Senator Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine who helped approved the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform, the America’s Healthy Future Act, earlier in the year and who remarked she may not vote on the final bill, said, “I was extremely disappointed,” noting that when the Democrats reached their needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, “there was zero opportunity to amend the bill or modify it, and Democrats had no incentive to reach across the aisle.”

Ahead are difficult negotiations with the House of Representatives to craft a final bill President Obama would sign into law. These talks, which will formally get under way early in the new year, will take place amid anger among many liberal House Democrats the Senate bill failed to contain a government-run public health insurance option.

Members of the House Progressive Caucus have vowed to fight to keep this public option in any final legislation that emerges, along with other provisions they say are needed to protect lower and middle-income Americans and hold insurance companies accountable.

In a statement, the Democratic chairmen of three key House committees said while there are clear differences between House and Senate bills, both will bring fundamental health care coverage to millions who are currently uninsured.

Obama administration officials have been quoted as saying they anticipate negotiations on a final bill would not be complete until after the President’s State of the Union Address in January, and could slip even later into the new year.

President Obama issued a statement to the press in the State Dining Room in the White House saying that the vote is “legislation that brings us toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle to reform America’s health care system.”

He also pointed out the bill’s strengths, noting, “The reform bill that passed the Senate this morning, like the House bill, includes the toughest measures ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny you coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition. They will no longer be able to drop your coverage when you get sick. No longer will you have to pay unlimited amounts out of your own pocket for the treatments you need. And you’ll be able to appeal unfair decisions by insurance companies to an independent party.”

He also noted how historic the bill is, saying, “If passed, this will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s.”

Obama noted the potential social impact, saying, “It’s the impact reform will have on Americans who no longer have to go without a checkup or prescriptions that they need because they can’t afford them; on families who no longer have to worry that a single illness will send them into financial ruin; and on businesses that will no longer face exorbitant insurance rates that hamper their competitiveness.”

Obama afterwards made phone calls to various Senators and other people, including Victoria Kennedy and David Turner of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Turner had his health insurance rescinded in January of last year, after his insurance company went back into his record and alleged that he failed to disclose his full medical record at the time he applied for coverage. Turner was First Lady Michelle Obama’s guest during her husband’s speech to a joint session of Congress on health care reform back in September.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, a biography of actor Tom Cruise written by journalist Andrew Morton, has hit the number one spot on Amazon.com‘s Top Sellers list and The New York Times Best Sellers list.

Morton’s book was published January 15, and hit number one on Amazon.com’s Top Sellers list on January 18. Yesterday, the book hit the number one spot on The New York Times Best Sellers list. The book is not for sale in Britain or Ireland, and the New York Post has reported that British tourists to the United States are buying copies of the book to bring back home.

Morton makes some controversial assertions in the book, including that Cruise is second in command at the Church of Scientology, and that Scientology was the cause of Cruise and Nicole Kidman‘s separation.

Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields released a statement which said that the book was “absolutely loaded with false statements.” Cruise has threatened a USD$100 million lawsuit against Morton and the book’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press. The Church of Scientology also responded to Morton’s claims in the book. In a 15-page statement, the Church called the book “bigoted” and a “defamatory assault,” and said that Cruise “holds no official or unofficial position in the Church hierarchy.”

Morton was interviewed by the Associated Press, and responded to some of the statements made by the Church of Scientology. When asked if he had attempted to interview Cruise for the book, Morton said “I asked Tom for an interview and he declined.” In response to a statement released by Cruise’s publicists that he had not interviewed “one person who has known or worked with Tom” in the past twenty-five years, Morton responded “I interviewed everyone from scriptwriters to producers to actors to actresses to teachers to girlfriends to pupils to Scientologists to people who have audited him.” When questioned about his assertion that Cruise is “second in command” of the Church of Scientology, Morton stated “Scientology would be a shadow of what it is today if it had not been for the involvement of Tom Cruise.”

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that parts of the book “push the limits of responsible reporting.” A review in the Chicago Tribune was also critical, and Teresa Budasi wrote “If you read Andrew Morton’s unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise with a fan’s curiosity in one hand and a thinking person’s skepticism in the other, you’ll likely end up in the same place you were before you read it: not all that interested.” In his review of the book, Dave Shiflett of The Wall Street Journal commented on the litigious nature of the Church of Scientology, writing “Mr. Morton, apparently unfazed by the reputation of the group’s notoriously hair-triggered legal department, leaves few stones unhurled.”

Shortly before the book’s publication, a video produced by the Church of Scientology featuring Tom Cruise promoting his beliefs appeared on the Internet. After the Church of Scientology sent a legal complaint to the online video-sharing website YouTube, the video was taken down from that site, but is available on Gawker.com. A group of Internet users calling themselves “Anonymous” subsequently announced a “War on Scientology” including denial-of-service attacks against the Church of Scientology’s main websites. Andreas Heldal-Lund, founder of the Scientology-critical site and Norway-based non-profit organization Operation Clambake released a statement on Tuesday critical of the actions of the “Anonymous” group, saying that the Church of Scientology deserves the right to freedom of speech.

Actor Jerry O’Connell, who had previously acted alongside Cruise in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, produced a parody of the Cruise video which was released on Wednesday. Other Hollywood acquaintances of Cruise, including comedians Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, released statements defending Cruise and criticizing those who have mocked him for his beliefs. Sandler stated “To see anyone’s private life invaded and mocked like this is sickening,” and Stiller commented “People lose sight of the fact that Tom Cruise is actually a person. I feel for him.”

On Wednesday the Associated Press reported that Cruise will be a presenter at the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony on Sunday.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

With the Climate Conference in Bali having come to a successful conclusion, Wikinews journalist Sean Heron interviewed Christoph Bals from the German NGO Germanwatch on his opinion of the outcome, and an outlook on the future negotiations. Christoph is the Senior Political Executive of Germanwatch, Co-Author of the Climate protection-Index and did lobby work on Bali.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The 10.10 version of Ubuntu (codename Maverick Merkaat), a free operative system is to be released in the next few days. French Wikinews contributor Savant-fou (Baptiste) has interviewed Fabrice (fabrice_sp on Ubuntu), an Ubuntu’s MOTU (Master Of The Universe), member of the development team of the operative system.

Ubuntu is a computer operating system, based on Debian, which is created collaboratively by thousands of people. There are three official Ubuntu versions: Ubuntu Desktop Edition (for desktop and laptop PCs); Ubuntu Netbook Edition (for netbooks); and Ubuntu Server Edition (for use in servers).

Sunday, September 28, 2008

A fire on Saturday destroyed the main hall of the Egyptian National Theatre in Cairo. Six people have been injured including three firefighters. No one was in the theatre at the time as it was closed for the weekend.

Egyptian state culture minister Faruq Hosni, said “The fire broke out in the main hall of the theatre. It was probably caused by an electrical short circuit.”

Ataba Square was filled with thick white smoke just after sunset as a total of 22 fire engines responded. Egyptian riot police were also deployed to keep crowds of people back while the firefighters attempted to extinguish the blaze.

A civil defence officer described the fire as being almost contained, following a brief burst of high winds which blew the flames towards neighbouring shops and other buildings. The three firefighters were admitted to hospital suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation.

Brig. Gen. Nasr Zakaria, a senior officer of the Civil Defence Service, later confirmed Minister Hosni’s earlier statement, telling MENA (Middle East News Agency) that an electrical short had indeed caused the fire, by triggering an explosion in the theatres air conditioning system.